Dismiss, for a moment, the issue of localvore credentials. These tomatoes (in most cases) are grown in greenhouses and must be hauled hundreds of miles to your salad.

If the slicer is organic, it better be good.

How good?

Some folks might measure the ostensible virtues against a premium price tag, and of course, the metrics of texture and taste.

Others might be satisfied by those little stick-on “organic” labels that attest to each berry’s bonafides (yes, tomatoes are berries).

Still other consumers will question whether the tomato of choice rose from soil and compost or from an inert nutrient bath: in other words, from a hydroponic farm.

All organic tomatoes are not created equal.

Yet in most cases, no label informs us how the fruits’ roots deliver the goods to what we recognize as a vegetable.

Does it matter? To some soil-based farmers and their customers: a lot.

On the other hand, not all ardent fans of hydroponics hanker for organic certification.

Or, in the case of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program — the arbiter of certification standards in this country — there is no useful distinction between soil-based and hydroponic organic methods.

The last time the program’s own independent board of advisers ruled on the issue (in 2010), its recommendation to exclude hydroponic producers was ignored.

So is the Pine Brook, N.Y.-based nonprofit National Organic Coalition, whose members include Consumers Union, Equal Exchange and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

A statement from the group issued Feb. 7 terms the USDA’s stance “disturbing” because it fails to recognize the central role of well-managed soil in an ecological balance.

But the coalition holds out hope for certification of soil-less systems that bring fish (and their highly nutritious wastes) into the hydroponic loop.

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Other variables muddy the debate.

Corvallis, Ore.-based Oregon Tilth, one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest organic certifiers, welcomes qualifying hydroponic growers into its brand.

“But the whole discussion raises the question,” said Andrew Black, a Latin American specialist with the group, “what would we do with someone who wants to grow plants in sterilized potting soil?”

Deep treads

In early January, East Thetford organic farmer David Chapman started an online petition, KeepTheSoilInOrganic.org that takes the federal guidelines to task.

It cites the hydroponic-free organic standards of Mexico, Canada and most of Europe — standards that apply to home markets but evaporate when products arrive in the U.S. and qualify for a coveted “organic” sticker.

Chapman’s petition has nearly 500 consumers’ signatures. Among those who signed are Ripton-based climate activist Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” a bestselling exploration of America’s industrialized food systems.

Producers who signed the petition include organic-farming superstars Eliot Coleman and Dan Barber.

But David Chapman’s got more than an ideological dog in the fight.

Fungal bridges

The thousands of greenhouse tomatoes at Chapman’s Long Wind Farm are rooted in organic matter, and he faces growing competition from organic hydroponic growers who can bring crops to market more cheaply.

Chapman believes another, underlying value is at stake.

“Tending to biological diversity, to that blend of micro-colonies, is a well-established foundation of organic farming,” Chapman said. “There are a lot of complex interactions going on in there.”

An appreciation for those interactions is at the heart of the modern organic movement that began, many say, with Sir Alfred Howard’s 1940 book, “An Agricultural Testament.”

Howard refers to soil as “the earth’s capital” and was among the first to recognize the bio-chemical action of microscopic colonies as “a living, mycorrhizal (fungal) bridge” between minerals and plant tissue.

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Chapman regularly invokes Howard’s more widely known mantra: “Feed the soil, not the plant.”

And he repeatedly asserts that hydroponic methods have a useful place in the world.

“I do not think it’s an evil conspiracy,” Chapman said. “It’s a fascinating way to grow plants. It’s ingenious, and it obviously works very well.

“Within the confines of that system, it’s a brilliant innovation,” he added. “God bless ’em — it’s still farming, and it’s still hard work. But I say label it accordingly and market it as such. Call it hydroponic and be proud of it.”

Dehne’s organization declines to certify hydroponic producers. At a Jan. 18 organizational meeting, its members voted with near unanimity to petition the USDA to adapt its advisory board’s recommendation against hydroponics.

Standing among his fledgling crops of greenhouse chard, kale and collard greens, VOF-certified Charlotte farmer David Miskell said he’s hopeful, but also skeptical, that Vermont’s point will get across.

“As soon as the USDA took over organic certification, I’ve seen politics getting in the way of real progress,” Miskell said. “The way things are going, there’s going to be a lot more ‘organic’ food being sold, and less and less of it being organic.”

Lecture circuit

Jean Richardson, a North Ferrisburgh organic maple producer, has served on the National Organic Standards Board since 2012.

At a meeting in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, she said administrators at the National Organic Program “thoroughly lectured” the 15-member advisory board for acting with too much independence.

Richardson is accustomed to lectures: She’s an emeritus professor at the University of Vermont, where she taught environmental studies and environmental law.

But she found the NOP’s dressing-down disconcerting.

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“We’re there to provide checks and balances,” she told the Burlington Free Press. “We’re the voice of the people. My guess is that if the (2010) vote were taken again, the board would uphold the earlier recommendation.”

Richardson said she is not opposed to hydroponics. She touts the method’s stingy use of water (which its systems recirculate) as its chief virtue.

But, she added, hydroponics’ reliance on an inert (sterile) growth medium is the antithesis of biodiversity: “It’s a monoculture.”

Words' worth

No one argues that hydroponic plants don’t flourish when properly babied.

Rick Middlebrook, owner of Green Thumb Gardening Hydroponics in Jericho, rightly points out that the vegetation in his converted church speaks for itself.

A cherry tomato plant, at least a dozen feet long, snaked halfway to the ceiling from its reservoir. Liquid fertilized ornamentals flexed everywhere from beefy stalks.

Overhead, one cluster of grow lights spun from the ceiling on what might have once been a fan. Another motorized cluster purred back and forth along a linear track.

“Our parents used RapidGrow or MiracleGro,” he said. “It’s not like this is battery acid. It’s more like amino acids — the building blocks of life. Plants don’t know the difference when this is being sucked up into their roots, because by then, the nutrients have all been broken down to the ionic level.”

The process, Middlebrook said, is no different from that of taking vitamin supplements.

“Really, ‘organic’ becomes a matter of semantics, like ‘sustainability’ or ‘micro-brewing.’ Big corporations have robbed them of meaning,” he said.

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“Basically,” Middlebrook concluded, “I’m interested in good stewardship of the planet, and I believe hydroponics is the future of farming, especially urban farming.”

No apologies

In an online summary of the enterprise, she cites the advantages of harvesting heat from buildings, recirculating all irrigation water and, above all, producing food close to the people who will eat it.

Lufa uses no synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides in its greenhouses.

“The formation of the business was based on a simple concept of how to get a better tomato year round in New England,” Cunniff said last week.

Backyard Farms tomatoes travel no more than a day to grocery shelves. Some of them make their way to the “conventional” produce section at City Market in Burlington.

The co-op’s policy toward hydroponic produce hews to that of the Vermont Organic Farmers certification program.

“As far as we’re concerned,” said Jason Pappas, the co-op’s assistant manager in the produce department, “all hydroponics are conventional.”

Roots reconnaissance

Oddly, the Backyard Farms tomatoes from Maine are not labeled “hydroponic” — although the company doesn’t shy from the term on its website.

Other, much larger producers appear to be more cautious.

The Wild Harvest Organic line of produce, a brand adopted by Shaw’s supermarkets, lists country of origin but excludes whether the plants are water- or soil-grown.

Joe Voci, the supply-chain manager for Shaw’s perishable produce, discovered that the Wild Harvest basil, at least, is field-grown. Corporate spokeswoman Mary Vander Leest wrote in an email that the provenance of produce could be difficult, beyond assurances that the organic produce is free of artificial fertilizers and pesticides.

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Stemming a stigma

The Sunset brand of organic produce, greenhouse-grown in Canada, the United States and Mexico, shies from any mention of hydroponic.

“We prefer to use the term ‘greenhouse-grown,’” explained Sunset spokeswoman Nancy Pickersgill, speaking from her Kingsville, Ontario, office. “‘Hydroponics’ is just not a term that we use.”

About 80 percent of Sunset’s produce is sold in the United States, where (unlike in Canada and Mexico) it receives the “organic” stamp of approval.

Wholesum Family Farms, a Mexican hydroponics giant now headquartered in Nogales, Ariz., is similarly certified. It likewise keeps “hydroponic” out of its marketing, despite the tangible benefits of water conservation in a drought-prone part of the continent.

Does soil-less agriculture carry a stigma we should know about (other than its association with clandestine cannabis gardens)?

We turned to the Garden State for an answer.

Hopes and fears

The discussion of hydroponic-as-organic is an “almost-religious dispute,” because it traffics in hopes and fears, said Jack Rabin, the associate director of farm programs at Rutgers, N.J., Agricultural Experiment Station.

In a recent email exchange, Rabin elaborated:

“Some people have negative association of hydroponics with industrial farming. Yet, most future local and urban agriculture that becomes commercial will incorporate controlled environment practices due to land costs and protection,” he wrote.

Yet “hydroponic production is a clean, sanitary and safe, healthy, high quality, resource-conserving, local, space-efficient, labor-efficient and labor-dignity, non-polluting production system in its own right. It should not need organic certification,” he wrote.

Large hydroponic producers seek that credential, Rabin added, because they sense retail customers and patrons are “irrationally fearful of food safety and health,” and because they seek a greater share of the market, at premium prices.

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“As a consumer, I want to know about outcome, because that is what I eat,” he wrote. “If I’m interested in having my purchasing dollars reflect my personal values, then product traits like local, fresh, ripe and knowing the farmer — are worth more to me than either ‘organic’ or ‘hydroponic.’”

Merit badges

Back in Vermont, Waitsfield farmer Dave Hartshorn straddles the divide. He works Hartshorn Certified Organic Farm and about a year ago, the farm added a large, conventional greenhouse operation, Green Mountain Harvest Hydroponics.

That facility has many advantages but is no piece of cake, Hartshorn said: Hydroponic systems lack soil’s buffering effect against swings in acidity, microclimate and nutrient levels.

In neither sector does he allow GMOs, petroleum-based fertilizers or pesticides. That sort of “conventional” farming, he says, cedes far too much control of food supplies to large corporations.

Nor does Hartshorn lose sleep over the distinction between how state and federal guidelines classify his two farms.

“I’m not fighting for certified organic hydroponic. I don’t think it needs to be,” he said. “One has soil; one doesn’t. They both have merit.”